A magazine called Drum was a vehicle for emerging black writers like Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi and Es'kia Mphahlele.

The now-governing African National Congress led a determined campaign to fight the removals.

But on a rainy morning in 1955, 2000 police armed with guns and clubs, moved into its crowded streets.

Residents were forced to load their possessions onto trucks and dumped in the new township of Meadowlands, later incorporated into Soweto, where bleak rows of roughly constructed two-room houses awaited them.

Cherished memory

THE DAY THEY CAME FOR OUR HOUSE

Armed with bulldozersthey cameto do a jobnothing morejust hired killers

We gave waythere was nothing we could doalthough the bitterness stung in us,in the place we knew to be part of usand in the earth around,

We stood.Slow painfully slowclumsy crushes crawled overthe firm pillarsinto the rooms that held usand the roof that coveredour heads

We stood.Dust clouded our visionWe held back tearsIt was over in minutes,

Over the next eight years, the bustling neighbourhood that was home to more than 50,000 people was flattened.

A new white suburb emerged from the rubble called Triomf, Afrikaans for "triumph."

More than a decade after apartheid's end, Sophiatown continues to occupy a cherished place in South African memory.

It has been the subject of books, films and an acclaimed musical.

"Despite the poverty, Sophiatown had a special character; for Africans it was the Left Bank in Paris, Greenwich Village in New York, the home of writers, artists, doctors and lawyers. It was both bohemian and conventional, lively and sedate," former president Nelson Mandela recalled in his book Long Walk to Freedom.

The City of Johannesburg decided to return the suburb to its original name in 1997.

But local authorities were unable to meet the costs at the time and it took another six years to complete the process.